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| Mrs. Lou and Mr. Jeffrey renew their vows after 50 years of marriage. |
I had never been to a vow renewal before, but let me tell you, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed. I don't know how men feel about sitting at a wedding, but to a woman watching two people pledge their love to each other, especially when a Christian woman watches two people pledge their love to each other before God, promising to love each other as God first loved them, it is one of the most touching things she can ever experience.
The hope and promise of beginning a new life with the person God made just for you to love and love you is literally the stuff fairy tales are made of, and there is nothing as romantic and emotional as getting to be there when this most intimate, most serious, most honest of promises is made between these two people.
But it's even more than that. Almost fifteen years ago two of the most wonderful people I know stood in a church and made these promises to each other. They are one of my "couple" friends who I like to say "came out the womb married to each other." Nancy is larger than life. She is one of those people who brightens a room just by entering it. She makes the people around her better. When I met her freshmen year of college, I knew almost instantly we would be life long friends. I was so blessed when she and I pledged the same sorority and spent four years becoming very close.
Over those years I got to know her boyfriend, Coley. Coley is two years older than us. When I met him he was a junior pulp and paper major at NC State. Let me tell you, he is pretty awesome himself, but in a completely different way than Nancy. He is the more strong, silent type to Nancy's social butterfly. He is hilarious, but not to the world. They are and always have been one of those couples who others hope their relationship can be like.
They got married just a few weeks, maybe even days after Nancy and I graduated college. The wedding was a joyous day for everyone. I don't remember how many people were there that day, but I know it was a lot. As I sat in that church packed with people, I honestly think it was the first and maybe only wedding that has made me cry. Sitting there, looking at the two of them smiling at each other, saying those vows that I and everyone in there knew they meant with every fiber of their being, touched me, but the thing that got me the most that day was Coley. I thought to myself, "Wow, look how much he loves her. He loves her enough to get past his dislike of being the center of attention; his dislike of being in front of people and proclaim his love to her in front of all these people." I can still feel the way I felt that day. It was an amazing feeling. I still hope I have that one day, but now, after tonight, I have something else to aim toward.
As beautiful and wonderful as Coley and Nancy's wedding was, it had nothing on the vow renewal I witnessed tonight. The words and vows and even song lyrics had a different meaning. There was still the hope. There was still the love. There was still every single thing that always comes pouring through when two people commit themselves to each other, but watching this magnificent couple renew themselves to each other with smiles on their faces; love in their eyes; and five pews of family that have come to be, as "they" say, "all because two people fell in love," was one of the most awe inspiring things I have never seen.
Last night a friend and I went to see Safe Haven. It was a wonderful movie, classic Nicholas Sparks in every way. It was definitely the epitome of a Hollywood romance. After the movie we stopped by a store so I could pick up a present for Mr. Jeffrey and Mrs. Lou, and as we perused the aisles my friend observed, "I wonder why more people don't renew their vows anymore? It just isn't something you hear about that much."
To which I responded, "I guess because not too many people make it that long these days."
She shook her head and replied, "I guess you're right."
It's true. Most of the world doesn't have couples to look to who make it. It has become the thing to do to just walk away than to try to fix things. I guess that is why Hollywood loves Nicholas Sparks, with his predictable plot lines of epic love stories. The masses of people crave seeing that kind of love. It has almost become just as much a fairytale as the ones with magical godmothers, wicked stepmothers, and princes who slay dragons and search entire kingdoms to find that one elusive lady whose foot fits into that glass slipper, but as I sit her tonight writing this, I realized just how blessed I am. I am in the minority. I am surrounded by that fight-through-the-crap, take-each-other-for-granted, stand-by-each-other-every-day kinda love.
People seem to love The Notebook so much because of the ending. (In case you haven't seen it, I won't obviously give it away.) We say that doesn't exist, but I beg to differ. When my momma died in 1995, it was sort of unexpected. She had been sick for a very long time, but she ultimately died in a car accident (another story for another time.) I was 19. Like most 19 year olds, I thought I got stuff, but I really got very little, and I was too consumed with me and my grief, but almost four years ago my beloved stepmother also lost her battle to cancer.
She had been in the hospital for awhile fighting, but when the doctors told her children and my daddy there was nothing else they could do, they decided to bring her home so she could spend her last days in the comfort of her house with her family. She came home on a Friday. Hospice was scheduled to start coming on Monday, but as we got her home and got her settled in, we all had an idea she probably wouldn't make it until Monday.
On Sunday, she began to leave us, and we all gathered in the room with her and my daddy lead us in prayer around her. That prayer was one of the sweetest prayers I ever heard. As she laid in the hospital bed, he held her hand, and I sat on the floor beside him with my head on his leg. He thanked God for her life. He thanked God for sending her to him and rescuing him from the heart break of losing my momma. He thanked God for the amazing woman she was; for loving his children as her own. He praised her gentle spirit, her childlike innocence until the very end. He talked about how much he would miss her and how his favorite memories with her were just riding around in the truck eating a pack of Nabs and sharing a Diet Pepsi, but finally he said, "God, she has been an angel on earth, and she will be a jewel in heaven. We will miss her, but God, please take her so she doesn't have to suffer anymore because she doesn't deserve to suffer like this." After he said "Amen," most of us got up and left, and it was just a few hours when she went to her eternal home.
That prayer that day was a true act of love. It was better than a Nicholas Sparks kinda love. It was a love ordained and blessed by God between two people who ALWAYS put Him first no matter what. The whole Notebook part of it is that while daddy let her go, he never recovered from losing her. He was older than when momma died. He had a myriad of health problems himself. It was just a little over a year later he went to the hospital to have back surgery. The back got better, but after that, and even after Mrs. Jessie died, he was never the same. He got a mysterious illness or some sort after the surgery where he threw up pretty much everything he tried to eat. He lost 60 pounds from August to February when he too went home to be with his beloved Jackie and Jessie. I always thought it, but I didn't say it, but as I tell this story to people they always tell me, "You know, I think he died of a broken heart." I agree with them.
See real love does exist, and I mean the real kind, not the roses and candlelight and getting whisked away on fancy trips kind. I am talking about the kind where you are there every. single. day; the kind where you argue a lot; where you want to wring your spouse's neck; where the children drive you insane and you have to dig in your heels to take life's hardest and heaviest punches; the kind they don't write fairytales about because it isn't as exciting as the butterflies and excitement of the wooing and first kisses and drama that ensues to get two people to be together. But it is the real kind; the best kind; the kind I pray for and am holding out for, and I know that one day God will grant me. And when He does, I know my future hubby and I are going to be a-okay because I have seen first hand what real love it.
I have been there as couples my age first fell in love and took the scary steps of standing at an altar promising forever and all of themselves to each other. I have been enveloped by it, not once but twice by my daddy and the two amazing women God put in his life. I have witnessed how unselfish true love is as my daddy knew it was better for Mrs. Jessie to go Home than to stay here with him suffering, and tonight I saw it renewed in a place where it was and is so fruitful that it never went away.
I know I won't ever get to 50 years at this point, but I hope I can get to something like it. Tonight I toyed for a brief second with not going, but as I talked to a friend I said, "I have to go. fifty years is worth celebrating." To which she responded, "Dang straight."
So to Coley and Nancy, Charlie and Jackie, Charlie and Jessie, Jeffrey and Lou, thank you for inspiring me. Thank you for teaching me. Thank you for showing me what the real love is all about.
2 comments:
I have no words. Thank you for that.
Regina, such a beautiful testament to all that love can and should be.
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